


Panic Divorce Not!Fic

by roebling



Series: Unfinished and Things that are Otherwise Not Fic [1]
Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roebling/pseuds/roebling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Total not!fic that can be summarized thusly: So I really want to write an epically long story about the Brendon and Ryan and Spencer and the breakup, where Brendon doesn't realize that Spencer wants to stay with him until Spencer's like, Ryan said we can keep the name, and Brendon's like, we??? and making melty heart eyes at Spencer</p>
            </blockquote>





	Panic Divorce Not!Fic

It's not that Brendon doesn't like Spencer, it's just that when they first meet Spencer is kind of a nonentity, especially in light of RYAN, who is sharp and strangely beautiful and full of faux bravado and intense, amazing ideas. Spencer's just some regular old kid; he's good to joke with and his mom always gives them snacks when they come over for practice and he'll give Brendon a ride home when he needs it, but Brendon never gets the impression that he needs to care too much about what Spencer thinks. It's a weird relationship he develops with Ryan and Spencer and Brent, anyway. They're all kind of awesome and Brendon loves hanging with them but he's not deluded enough to think they'd want him around if it weren't for the fact that he can sing that and play guitar and bass and keyboards. Brendon's friends have almost always been circumstantial.

He knows right away that if he wants them to keep him around, it's Ryan he's gotta impress. He also realizes right away that's going to take a lot of work. Ryan is surrounded by an invisible wall and an invisible moat and an invisible chain link fence. It's kind of weird because Brendon totally knows he posts half naked pictures of himself online, but he never hears Ryan talk about his family, ever (and that's just another reason he feels they have a special connection). Eventually he has to ask Spencer what the deal is. Spencer frowns and takes him aside and after that Brendon knows not to ask questions about Ryan's family.

His family is kind of screwed up too, but he doesn't keep that a secret. He talks about it with the guys every chance he can get, actually. Brendon is an oversharer. His sister told him that once when he wouldn't shut up about this new song they were playing in band class. It's stuck in his head ever since, even though he can't even remember what the song was any more. Ryan gets annoyed when Brendon talks too much during practice; Brendon learns to read him pretty quickly. When his eyes go flat and he ducks his head and plucks angrily at his guitar, Brendon knows it's time to shut up.

Anyway, Brendon is kind of obsessed with Ryan, with Ryan's looks and his snobbery and especially with pleasing Ryan. He gets a little obsessed with people; he expects it will fade over time, just like his crushes on Steve-who-played-tennis and Morris-from-church-choir faded.

Honestly, Brendon doesn't expect the band to last. He is as enthusiastic as any of them, but he's more familiar with reality, too.

When Ryan tells them all that Pete Wentz is coming to see them play, Brendon is fairly sure he's dreaming.

In fact, the next two years are kind of a dream. None of it seems even remotely real. One minute he's working at the Smoothie Hut and the next they're playing fucking Time Square on New Year's Eve, the sparkling ball in the background. He has his first drink and his first kiss and he loses his virginity and that's all inside the first six months. They tour with The Academy Is ... and pretty soon they're headlining tours. They ditch Brent, and they find Jon. They travel all over the world. He hasn't got even a moment to think about what his life as become.

He spends nearly every day with his band, and he kind of loves them more than he ever thought he would, and yet still some tiny, awful voice reminds him that this is a job, that he was hired to do a job, that it'll never with him like it is with them. He'll never have the effortless ease and comfort with Ryan that Spencer does. He'll never have that kind of trust. In fact, as they've gotten bigger and things have gotten crazier, it's harder and harder to really know what to do to make Ryan happy. Sure, they fought when they were recording the record, but Brendon put that down as inexperience. Now, they fight about simpler things: Ryan hates how messy Brendon is, is horribly critical about his performances, hates that he likes to watch stupid tv shows and listen to pop radio. He also hates that Brendon drinks, at least until he starts drinking himself.

So even though when people write about or talk about the band it's always them -- Brendon and Ryan, voice and lyrics, singer and lead guitarist, sometimes boyfriend and boyfriend -- in reality Brendon doesn't really feel that close to Ryan. In fact, the harder he tries, the further away Ryan seems to be. It's kind of a slap in the face when Jon, who is a totally a great guy, is writing songs with Ryan after only a few months. They're like creative soul mates or something. Brendon and Ryan end up screaming at each other half the time when they sit down to write.

And maybe it's kind of just by default that he starts to hang out with Spencer more. It's not like he ever didn't like Spencer, after all, and probably of all of them he's the one that this whole thing has affected the least. He's still kind of stupidly nice and polite to their fans and he drinks but he rarely gets sloppy drunk and he has a girlfriend who is gorgeous and awesome but really pretty normal. He takes on a ton of responsibility for the business end of the band, things that make Brendon's head hurt. Spencer's always on the phone with venders and promoters and magazines. He has a schedule full of color codes and detailed appointments. At the same time, he's totally willing to watch DVDs on the bus or go to a mall or play Guitar Hero. Brendon isn't going to say no to any of that.

(If this were really a story, it would be in Brendon's POV, and we'd also see scenes of Spencer going out of his way to do little things for Brendon -- reminding him to call his mom on her birthday, picking up movies he knows Brendon wants to see, etc., etc. Brendon just thinks it's Spencer being Spencer though, because he's thoughtful that way with everyone ... even though it's clear that Spencer's just a little more thoughtful around Brendon.)

Brendon's a lot more shaken up by ordeal of the second album than he lets on. He's happy ... he's fairly happy with Pretty. Odd. but it was like he had to fight tooth and nail with Ryan to be able to include any of himself, which kind of seems ridiculous considering he's singing. He's not sure when he realizes, but he knows he's not going to be able to do that again. He doesn't think about what that means for a long time, that he can't write with Ryan anymore, but the knowledge is there -- maybe it's time to quit this job. At the same time, the band is his whole life -- he loves it and he loves Jon and Spencer and even Ryan, and it sucks that things haven't worked out better. Maybe they would have known sooner, if the first album hadn't been so rushed and if everything after hadn't happened so quickly. Either way, he starts steeling himself to make a decision.

They don't tour as much for Pretty. Odd. as they did for the first record, and the shows are kind of lackluster. Brendon feels like it's kind of his fault, because the other guys are fine -- he's the odd one out, like he's always been. When the tours are done, they all kind of go their own ways for a little while -- Ryan goes to New York, Jon goes home to Chicago, Spencer goes back to Vegas to clean up the fallout of his breakup with Haley, and Brendon decides he's going to move to Malibu with Shane.

He's there for three months before Ryan shows up, saying it's time to start writing.

It kind of makes him sick because doesn't Ryan realize this isn't going to work? Brendon doesn't know what to say. It kind of doesn't matter because they never really end up sitting down to write anyway. Ryan spends half his time with Alex fucking Greenwald, who Brendon doesn't care for at all, and it's just one more thing where they're headed in completely opposite directions. It's weird because Brendon would have killed for Ryan to pay that kind of attention to him, once, and now he's just kind of annoyed and disappointed.

Spencer comes out to stay, too, which is a little surprising. Brendon knows the breakup was really hard on him -- it wasn't acrimonious but it was long and slow and grinding, and Spencer spent six months ignoring it by smoking up constantly. He's a good guy to have around, willing to come when Brendon walks the dogs and excellent at assembling Ikea furniture and lighting the grill. (Brendon won't light the grill; he's always afraid it's going to explode.)

Brendon has some songs. He plays them for Spencer and he's really receptive, full of encouragement and ideas. Spencer might not play anything other than drums, but he's got a good ear and he's smart and thoughful. He tends to stay quiet when they all write together, but Brendon always respects his opinion. That's the push that Brendon needs to show them to Ryan. He sits down and plays them all for Ryan but he can tell right away it was a bad idea, because Ryan's face goes blank and he just kind of nods and says meaningless things. It makes Brendon so mad, in a way, because it's not like Ryan's fucking Mozart, but he's so dismissive of everything Brendon does.

It doesn't even matter because Ryan's all caught up in this house he's buying and planning to renovate and with this new crowd he's hanging around with. Brendon is learning to surf and keeping himself busy while he tries to figure out what to do. If he went solo, he wonders if the other guys would carry on without him. He's pretty sure they would. It's lame but the first time he thinks that he ends up getting red-eyed and is barely able to keep from crying.

Ryan buys his stupid house, and gets ready to move in. Brendon isn't not talking to him, but he isn't really talking to him, either. Brendon knows that he has to tell Ryan that he's done with the band, but he just can't, not now. He sits in the living room and watches Spencer and Ryan carry boxes downstairs. He's sad to see them go -- to see Spencer go, at least. He likes having Spencer around, likes working with him, really likes him a lot -- but he knows where Spencer's loyalties lay.

They put everything in Spencer's car and Ryan comes in and hovers awkwardly for a moment.

"Thanks for letting me stay, dude," he says.

"Of course," Brendon says. "Mi casa es su casa." He smiles, trying to make light of it.

"I'll call you next week," Ryan says. "We'll hook up and work on those lyrics."

"Yeah," Brendon says. "Awesome."

Ryan smiles a little and waves and Brendon hears the engine turn over and the car pull away. The fact that Spencer didn't even come say goodbye hurts. All of it hurts. He sits on the couch for an hour, thinking back, trying to figure out what he could have done to fix things, short of letting Ryan walk all over him. He can't figure it out though. He can't figure out why things have ended up like this and it's giving him a huge headache even thinking about it.

He grabs a couple of bottles of beer and a blanket and heads down to the beach. It's nice this time of year because there are no crowds. He can concentrate on the waves and the seabirds and the evening sun dipping into the ocean. Shane's going to teach him to surf once it gets a little warmer, and he can't wait. He thinks maybe it won't be so bad; he's got friends and people who believe in him. The prospect of writing and playing music he loves is so exciting he can almost ignore how much it hurts to think of being up on stage with some anonymous backing band.

He drinks his two beers. It's getting dark and it's a little chilly. He's working up the motivation to go inside and maybe start cooking something for dinner when he hears someone walking towards him. He doesn't turn around. He starts when Spencer sits down close beside him.

"Hey," Spencer says, smiling. He's so close their shoulders bump.

"Hi," Brendon says.

"I told him," Spencer says, softly. "I told him it wasn't going to work anymore. Ryan wasn't really surprised."

"What?" Brendon asks, voice hush.

"I guess I should have asked you first," Spencer says quietly. "But I just ... it was so dumb to keep pretending we were going to be able to write an album with them." He pauses, and laughs a little sadly. "He said we could keep the name."

"We can?" Brendon asks. He can't ... He doesn't care about the name, but he never once dared think Spencer would pick him.

"I totally should have checked with you, dude, but I don't know, I always kind of liked our dumb name. We can change it though," says Spencer.

"No," Brendon says. "I like it too. You totally know me, Spence."

Spencer smiles. Brendon can't believe how right this already feels.


End file.
